


The Daredevil Defence

by Beguile



Category: Daredevil (TV), Iron Fist (TV), Jessica Jones (TV), Luke Cage (TV), The Defenders (Marvel TV)
Genre: Bad Attitudes, Bad Lying, Brett does not get paid enough for this crap, Destruction of Private Property, Feral Vigilantes, Improvised weapons, Interrogation, Matt is a Lawyer, The Real Superpower Was Friendship All Along
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-11
Updated: 2021-01-11
Packaged: 2021-03-16 04:09:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28700433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beguile/pseuds/Beguile
Summary: They had the four of them in one room: Murdock’s request. Of course he’d taken them all on as clients.Brett volunteers to talk to them and get the story straight.Written for @context-is-for-kingpins on Tumblr.
Comments: 35
Kudos: 159
Collections: DDE’s 2021 New Year’s Day Exchange





	The Daredevil Defence

**Author's Note:**

> Written for context-is-for-kingpins as part of the Daredevil Exchange. Hope you weren’t kept waiting too long! The second I saw the word potato, I knew I had to write something!
> 
> This takes place in the same imaginary universe where everybody is fine (and feral) and fights crime together. 
> 
> Special thanks to Dichotomy Studios who beta-ed and provided a fantastic dialogue suggestion. 
> 
> Readers, please enjoy!

* * *

“I’m related to Daredevil today ‘cause I’m breaking everything.”  
~A Mom

“You may not kill someone with a potato, but you can definitely damage their ego.”

~A Friend

* * *

They had the four of them in one room: Murdock’s request. Of course he’d taken them all on as clients. Even the billionaire, what was his name? Randy? That guy had dropped Jeri Hogarth’s name, though the way he’d said it made her sound more like a family friend than an attorney. Which was worse, honestly. Bad enough having Murdock chewing them out, but Jeri Hogarth razing the building to the ground for free seemed like the worst way for the night to end.

A couple of officers considered the case open and shut, and Brett couldn’t blame them. The facts pretty much spoke for themselves except for a couple of glaring details. There were only three of them in the interrogation room, plus Murdock. Seemed like someone was missing in action, though Brett doubted that was the case.

So Brett volunteered to do the talking. He liked Murdock, respected him. Murdock was good and decent, and there was something admirable in him showing up to help his friends (even though Brett thought it really suspicious he managed to beat them to the precinct. The way he and Nelson got the information that they did as fast as they did seemed like a superpower).

The trio of terror was in cuffs on the far side of the table. Randy the billionaire looked the most out of place in his wrinkled tux. Jessica Jones was next to him in her private investigator’s best, a leather bomber jacket and ripped jeans. Luke Cage was next to her in what appeared to be his usual, grey hoodie and jeans. No bullet holes, but from what Brett understood, there were no guns on the scene. There were a couple of busted televisions, a stereo, and one errant improvised weapon that Brett couldn’t wait to have explained.

Murdock had one hand across the table, gesturing placatingly. “Let me do the talking,” he finished saying before turning to Brett. “Evening, Detective.”  
  
“Murdock,” Brett said, sinking into the chair across from the merry trio of vigilantes. “You’re working late.”  
  
He looked like he got dressed in a hurry: shirt untucked, tie undone, hair askew; blood on his knuckles. Must have been at the gym when word reached him that NYPD had his buddies in custody. “I don’t have to be,” Murdock said. “This night ends pretty quick, you let my clients go.”  
  
“You know that’s not how this works.”  
  
“Since when did self-defence become a crime?”

“Since these three put five guys in the hospital,” Brett said.

“Five men attempting felony larceny.”  
  
“So they’re vigilantes.”  
  
“They’re good Samaritans.”  
  
Jessica scoffed. Murdock pretended not to notice, but Brett did. “You have something you’d like to contribute, Ms. Jones? I am all ears.”

“You don’t have to say anything,” Murdock said. Translation: _don’t say anything_.

“That an order, Counsellor?” Jessica asked.

“A polite request. From _your attorney_.” 

“Excuse me,” Randy said. Murdock glared at him. “What Matt is telling you is accurate. We were acting as good Samaritans.”  
  
“Right place, right time,” Luke added.

“What so they can talk and I can’t?” Jessica snapped.

“I never said-“ Murdock began.

She cut him off: “This is ridiculous. Can I fire you? You’re fired.”  
  
Murdock pulled away from the table. He looked back to Brett pleadingly. “Can you please let my clients go now?”

Brett ignored him, eyeing the other three, trying to give them the benefit of the doubt even though they all three had a habit of showing up in the right place at the right time. “Let’s start at the beginning. How’d you end up here? Where were you all coming from that you happened to be in that alleyway as four guys were trying to rob an electronics store?”

“I was at a charity benefit,” Randy said, “St. Agnes’s Orphanage. I have the invitation and a speech…” He went to reach into his jacket pocket, but with his hands cuffed to the table, and the fact that his pockets had been emptied when he was brought-in, meant he returned to sitting peacefully. He stared at Brett with wide blue eyes that were either completely innocent or a kind of sociopathic Brett had never encountered. “Your officers have them.”

“You make it a habit of walking home from charity benefits?” Brett asked.

“I make it a habit of walking most places.”  
  
“It’s true,” Luke said with a sigh, the way only a person inconvenienced by relentless walking could sigh. 

“What about you?” Brett asked Luke. “Were you at the charity benefit too?”  
  
Probably not, unless the dress code accommodated a hoodie and jeans. Unsurprisingly, Luke replied, “I was meeting a friend for coffee.”  
  
“Who’s the friend?” 

“Claire Temple.” 

Brett tilted his head towards the mirror, signalling for one of the officers watching to call her. “She can confirm?”  
  
“She can,” Luke said.

Brett nodded. “What about you, Ms. Jones? You going to this charity thing, or were you having coffee?”   
  
“Neither.”  
  
“What were you doing?”  
  
“Taking a walk.”  
  
“On public property, I hope.”

“Where else would I take a walk?”  
  
“You take any photos on your walk? Forensics found a busted DSLR camera in the alley near where we arrested you three. That wouldn’t be yours, would it? You working a case, Jones?”  
  
“I was taking a walk,” she said. She glanced over at Murdock. “Okay?”

Murdock kept looking at Brett until the silence wore thin. Then and only then did he say, in the most pleasant of tones, “Oh, were you talking to me? I thought I was fired.”  
  
Jessica tugged her hands as far as the cuffs would let her. Brett felt the table shift despite its weight. “God damn it, Murdock-“  
  
“If you want different representation-“  
  
“I’ll get Jeri down here for you, Jessica,” Randy said.

“Oh, yeah, she’ll definitely want to defend me,” Jessica chided.

“Had problems with lawyers before?” Brett asked.

“Who hasn’t?”

Fair point. “So you’re walking from St. Agnes’s, you’re walking to Metro General, and you’re just walking,” Brett said, reviewing the facts, “Who got to the scene first? Or did you all show up at the same time?”  
  
“I did,” Randy said, raising his hand slightly off the table. “I was there first.”  
  
Brett kept waiting for him to look at the others for corroboration, but he didn’t, again meeting Brett’s stare with utter earnestness. Brett shifted uncomfortably under the steady gaze. “And did you start on the men before these two showed-“  
  
“Danny didn’t start anything,” Murdock said.

Took Brett a long moment to realized that Randy was Danny. Damn it, right, the Rand kid, the one who went missing. Prodigal son returned. “Is that true?” Brett asked him.

Danny drew a breath, his eyes never leaving Brett’s. “I am the Immortal Iron-“

Luke cut him off: “He told them to stop.”  
  
Brett made a note to circle back to the Immortal Iron thing in a second. “You saw him?”  
  
“I heard him. He told them to stop.”  
  
Randy – er, Danny continued, still looking at Brett. The intensity of his stare felt like an attempt at some kind of Jedi mind trick, but there was no guile behind it, no deception. These were the plainest of facts he was laying out. “I told them to return the goods they had removed and to depart from that place immediately. When they refused, I went to recover the goods myself.”  
  
“So you attacked them?” Brett asked.

Murdock was about to leap across the table. Brett could feel him. But it was Luke who got to the answer, and his expression was just as earnest as Danny’s. “No, he literally went to their van and started grabbing televisions from the back of it and returning them. I watched him do it.”  
  
“You had arrived in the alley by that time.”  
  
Luke gave a single nod. “One of them came at Danny with a crowbar shortly after that.”

“How’d you react to that, Danny?”  
  
Again with the low voice, the stare with a gravitational pull all its own, the whole Jedi act: “I responded with appropriate strength and compassion.”  
  
Brett blinked. He searched the table, only to find Jessica pulling away, Luke looking up for strength, and Murdock with his hands folded, his face in a, “ _You did ask him how he reacted_ ,” expression. “Can one of you tell me what that means?”  
  
“It means he acted in self-defence after trying to stop a robbery in progress,” Murdock said. “Which is what I’ve been saying this entire time.”  
  
Luke spoke too: “He blocked a punch and kicked the guy’s legs out from under him.”

Jessica shrugged violently and added alongside them: “How should I know? I wasn’t there.”  
  
There were going to be holes to fill on this report, but Brett figured they should move on for now. “When did you get there?” he asked Jessica.  
  
“I don’t know. I came when the window got broken.”

“How’d the window get broken?”

“Someone threw a television. Which hit one of the guys.” She shrugged. “Who then fell through the window.”

Brett nodded. The guy was at Metro General, multiple lacerations, a head injury. “Who threw the television?”

Silence. Brett glanced between Danny and Luke before settling on Luke. “It wasn’t me,” Luke said.

“You sure about that?” Brett asked.

“Yes, I’m sure.”  
  
“How?”  
  
“Because I was busy with another guy,” he said, “Who I also threw out the window. _After_ it was broken.” 

“In self-defence,” Murdock muttered.

Luke nodded. “In self-defence,” he said, self-assuredly.

“The window and the throwing,” Murdock added with a cough that only made what he said sound more like bullshit, “It was all self-defence.”

Brett stared between the four of them, wondering what the hell he had done to deserve this. “So was it you who broke the window, Danny?”  
  
“No,” Danny said.

The atmosphere in the room shifted. All eyes were on him suddenly, except for Murdock’s. He had his head lowered towards his folded hands on the table. Jessica and Luke were giving Danny a side-eye he didn’t notice for Brett staring back at him. “You didn’t break the window, who did? Was it one of the guys from the robbery chucking a tv at his own people?”

Danny leaned back in his chair suddenly. “No,” he said with a sigh, “No, I broke the window. I…forgot that it was me. It was I. I broke the window.”

“You could have just said it was one of the robbers,” Jessica deadpanned.

“That would be dishonest.”  
  
She rolled her eyes and went back to seething in silence.

“What you said doesn’t sound honest to me,” Brett contended.

“It is honest: I broke the window.” He searched for the right word, gesturing with his hands against the table to illustrate a television being thrown? Being knocked over. “I was trying to take it away from someone? The television.”

“It was an accident,” Murdock added.

Brett focused on Danny: “You don’t sound sure.”

“Look, what the hell does it matter how the window got broken?” Jessica asked.

Brett shrugged. “Just trying to get all the facts for my report. You said you saw the guy coming through the window?”   
  
“Yeah,” Jessica groaned. She glanced over at Murdock, probably worried he was going to stop her, but when he didn’t, she actually leaned towards the table to talk. “Yeah, the window got broken. I took a look and saw them getting their asses kicked. So I went to help them.”  
  
“In self-defence,” Danny said, reaching a cuffed hand over to hers.

Jessica let him keep his hand there but did not look happy about it. “Yeah.”  
  
“So it was the three of you against the five of them?”  
  
Jessica: “Yeah.”  
  
Luke: “Yes.”  
  
Danny: “I broke the window. It was me.”  
  
Jessica put her hand on top of Danny’s and gave it a tight, tight squeeze. “I pulled one guy off of Danny and stopped another guy from hitting Luke in the head.”

“Did you throw them out the window too?”  
  
“No.”  
  
Brett nodded.

“I put one of them on the floor and the other through-“

“Over,” Luke interrupted.

Jessica nodded. “Over the counter.”  
  
“In self-defence,” Luke said in closing.

Murdock nodded, wincing. He scrubbed a hand over his forehead, taking a moment to recover before resuming his lawyerly pose – hands folded on the table, head held at an angle of patience, understanding, resolve. “I’m sure what my clients are saying is consistent with the physical evidence.”  
  
“Almost,” Brett said. “There’s just a few details that I want to make clear. It was just the three of your in that electronics store? Danny, then Luke, then Jessica?”  
  
He got stares – Danny’s wide-eyed earnestness, Jessica’s glare, Luke’s steady gaze. They all gave some variation of ‘yeah.’ “Just the three of us,” Jessica said, her eyes darting down and to the right.

“See, that’s funny,” Brett said, “Not only because eyewitnesses place a fourth person at the scene-“

“It was dark, Detective,” Murdock started.

Brett did not let him finish, “-but because this is Hell’s Kitchen. When five guys try to knock over an electronics store, there is always one person who is first on the scene, and I don’t see him at this table here tonight. I keep hearing about him though. He seems like the type who would use a television to throw some guy out a window.”  
  
“It was me,” Danny said, without blinking. “I did it. I will pay for all the damages, and I am very sorry.”  
  
“You have proof that there was a fourth person on the scene?” Jessica demanded.

“Potato,” Brett said. He let the word hang on the air, let the three of them shuffle in their seats. Murdock was frozen in his lawyer pose, eyes unblinking behind is scarlet lenses.

Luke leaned forward. “Potato?” he repeated.

“Okay, so it wasn’t you,” Brett said. He looked at the other two and repeated himself. “P-O-T-A-T-O. Potato. Which one of you was it?”  
  
“Um…” Danny looked at Jessica, then back to Brett. “It was-“

Jessica raised a hand. “Me. I did it. You caught me, Detective.”  
  
“What’d you do?” Brett asked.

“Do I really have to do this?”  
  
“Yes,” he said. “I spelled it out for you, now you spell it out for me. Tell me about the potato.”  
  
Jessica sighed. She sank back in her chair. “We’re done here. Get me out of these cuffs, Counselor, now.”  
  
Danny looked back to Brett, slowly raising his hand. “I…threw…the potato.”  
  
“None of you threw the potato!” Brett said. “There is only one vigilante in this town who would use a potato as a weapon, and it’s none of you. So just cut the crap and tell me he was there.”  
  
“Alright,” Luke said, finally stepping up to the plate as a voice of reason. “You’re right: the Daredevil was there. He threw the television at the guy which took him out the window.”  
  
“Thank you,” Brett said.

“I don’t know when he threw the potato though.”  
  
“Did he actually throw a potato?” Jessica asked, immensely disappointed.

“Yes! No one saw him, but it was taken from one of the produce stands, was improvised as a weapon and thrown into one of the suspects as he was trying to escape. Eyewitnesses claim it ricocheted off a building and a garbage can before it hit the guy in the back of the head!”

“Is he alright?” Danny asked.

“He’s fine,” Murdock said. He gestured to Brett. “Right? He’s fine?”  
  
“Yes, he’s fine.” Brett glared. Where the hell did Murdock get off trying to do his job after messing up the lawyer gig so much? “He’s upset that he got caught. And hit by a potato.”

“Man, that Devil of Hell’s Kitchen,” Jessica said, shaking her head. “I thought that costume was wacky, but throwing a potato?”  
  
“What kind of sick world do we live in,” Luke added, “That a man dresses up like the Devil and starts lobbing produce at people?”  
  
“That guy’s got problems.”

Luke wasn’t listening. “Seriously. You ask me, Detective-”  
  
“I didn’t,” Brett said.

But Luke was undeterred, “We’re a couple of civilians trying to do the right thing. But that Devil of Hell’s Kitchen character? He’s the one who broke the window tonight, doing thousands of dollars in damage to a local business, a person’s livelihood.”

Jessica continued shaking her head and patted the back of Danny’s hand. “Forcing a local billionaire-“

“And orphan!” Luke added.

“-to pay for his mistakes.”  
  
“And threw a potato at a guy,” Danny said. That he wasn’t taking the piss like Jones and Cage made it even more ridiculous and infuriating and, exasperatingly, kind of entertaining.

Murdock seemed equally irritated. “Sounds like he was just trying to help,” he muttered.

“Help? That man could have gotten somebody killed,” Luke said. “He’s lucky no one was killed. I mean, who throws a tv at a guy?”  
  
“Or a potato,” Danny added yet again. 

Brett couldn’t help himself. Rand could more than pay for the damages, and none of these idiots were the Daredevil, and Murdock was looking adequately flustered. “You said these three were acting in self-defence, Counsellor?”

“He also called us good Samaritans,” Jessica pointed out.

“We are good Samaritans,” Danny agreed, again missing the joke.

“Unlike that Daredevil guy,” Luke added with a small, self-assured smile.

Another wince crossed Murdock’s face. He gave a single, curt nod. “Yes. Good Samaritans.”

“You should have just used the Daredevil as your opening argument,” Brett said. He rose from the table and headed for the door.

“They’re free to go?”

“You’re surprised?” Brett knocked. An officer opened the door to let him out, coming inside with some keys. He started unlocking Danny, Jessica, and Luke’s cuffs. “I got enough problems without you three lying your asses off. Badly. Get the hell out of my town. And stay away from the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen.”

“Will do, Detective,” Jessica said pleasantly. She shook her hands and rose from the table.

“Good night, Detective,” Luke added.

“Next time call Jeri,” Matt told the three of them.

Brett left the room, job done.

* * *

Happy reading!


End file.
